Calls for Facebook to place a "panic button" on its pages have received the support of 44 police chiefs in England, Wales and Scotland, it has emerged. Police chiefs signed a letter backing the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (Ceop) centre, which wants the link on every page of the website. Facebook said an existing link allowing users to report abuse will in future enable a report to be made to Ceop. But Ceop said direct visible access to the button remained "unresolved". Ceop made public the letter signed by police chiefs - including Scotland Yard Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson - urging Facebook and other social networking sites to install the Ceop button. The dispute comes after Peter Chapman, 33, was last month jailed for killing Ashleigh Hall, 17. He made contact with her while using a false identity on the social networking site. The BBC's home affairs correspondent Danny Shaw said the move suggests the row between Ceop and Facebook is escalating. He added: "Other independent child protection experts say it's time to call an end to the dispute. "They say that Facebook is relatively safe, and further damaging publicity could drive users to seek contact in more risky online environments." Facebook had previously said it would not install a "panic button" on its main pages for users to report suspected paedophiles, but would develop its existing system. Ceop's director Jim Gamble has had a meeting in Washington DC with Facebook, which says it takes the issue seriously. Richard Allen, Facebook's head of policy in Europe, said the social networking site and Ceop had a "common agenda" on child safety on the internet. He said the site had showed Mr Gamble "a series of measures which we think will meet the requirements that he has". He added: "We're going to build into our reporting structure an ability for people who are in the United Kingdom with relevant reports to go directly to Ceop. "There are some issues around the design and the way in which we do that that Jim put to us very forcefully but... in order to change a website as fundamentally as he wishes us to do then that takes some time to work through."